Why has child-rearing descended into disaster? - Bel Mooney explains and then readily admits to her own guilt in the process - all most revealing.(By the way, I am just getting totally sick of 'always having been right' on the big, social issues. Still - not too much credit to me really - an ounce of common sense cancels out a metric tonne of liberal left theory.)
'What went wrong? It's a complicated issue, but I believe there is a link with the report published at the weekend by the Liberal-Left think-tank Demos.
If a mother is all but criminalised for telling her children off in public, it speaks of a weedy modern consensus which holds that being firm with children somehow threatens their human rights.
Yet the Demos report found - surprise, surprise - that children brought up within firm boundaries were likely to be happier and more successful, no matter what their class background.
I believe we have seen a catastrophic change in ideas of parenting in the past 30 years - and as a member of the postwar, 'baby boom' generation, I accept some responsibility. When I was a fledgling journalist I espoused some of the sillier, fashionable ideas about education.
For example, there was a 'free school' movement, which held that children brought up in the poorest working-class areas (such as Scotland Road in my home town of Liverpool) would be helped by being allowed to run wild by teachers they called 'Pete' instead of 'Sir.'
If a mother is all but criminalised for telling her children off in public, it speaks of a weedy modern consensus which holds that being firm with children somehow threatens their human rights.
Yet the Demos report found - surprise, surprise - that children brought up within firm boundaries were likely to be happier and more successful, no matter what their class background.
I believe we have seen a catastrophic change in ideas of parenting in the past 30 years - and as a member of the postwar, 'baby boom' generation, I accept some responsibility. When I was a fledgling journalist I espoused some of the sillier, fashionable ideas about education.
For example, there was a 'free school' movement, which held that children brought up in the poorest working-class areas (such as Scotland Road in my home town of Liverpool) would be helped by being allowed to run wild by teachers they called 'Pete' instead of 'Sir.'
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